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Dinner Parties Are Expanding So We Can Cover All the Late-breaking News Stories

They’re attributing our current fatigue to having just moved our clocks ahead, but my thesis is we’re all staying up later as dinner parties stretch out to cover the wide range of topics unfolding on what feels like an hourly basis.

Over drinks and appetizers in the living room we size up the other guests, trying to determine their politics, easing into whatever caucus or primary results will be revealed during the time we’ll be together.

By the main course, we know if they love or hate the Clintons while managing, of course, to learn where they grew up as well as what work they do or once did interspersed with some background information about their roots, where their family members now live as well as which foreign countries they’ve most enjoyed visiting. Outside of Manhattan, it’s conceivable that this is where golf courses, commuting and Starwood Club memberships might get covered.

The post-entree/pre-dessert salad course works well as by now we’ve had enough wine and built up the trust to be more candid. Last night’s topic du jour was, “How could Spitzer have imagined he’d get away with this,” which segued to, “Why do wives appear on camera next to their cheating husbands,” which got us back to the Clintons. By dessert, we’d all agreed the wives likely stand by the side of their cheating husbands for the sake of the children, which was addressed in today’s New York Times by Dina Matos Mc Greevey, who wrote, “Frankly, all I was thinking about was my daughter.”

Over perfectly poached pears dipped in chocolate, we wound down, speculating on why anyone would pay $5,000 for a prostitute (is that more than Raoul Felder gets?), the consensus being if you’re in politics, you should get sex for free, and Spitzer’s unexpected wild spending was handled in today’s Times also by Maureen Dowd.

With so much news to cover, today’s hosts don’t dare serve fewer than five courses.